


The First Steps

by TiyeTiye



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies), Vikings (TV)
Genre: Brothers, Family Relationships - Freeform, Vikings, Warrior Training, fistfights between brothers, little boys being assholes to each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 09:30:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12745623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TiyeTiye/pseuds/TiyeTiye
Summary: As a child, Ivar's mother did the best that she could to keep him safe.  Not wanting to see him be hurt, Aslaug refused to allow him to train as a warrior, which left him defenseless to the bullies of Kattegat, including his big brother Sigurd, until Ivar made an unexpected friend.





	The First Steps

The scrapes are still stinging and the bruises are just beginning to ache as Ivar hacks away at the young tree. He pauses for a moment to adjust his grip on the thick fallen branch that stands in for the sword he will probably never carry and wipe the angry tears off his face before returning to battle with an angry shout. He’s gone beyond the outskirts of Kattegat, towards Floki and Helga’s house, and this young tree has been the perfect outlet for his frustrations before. He beats and smashes away at it, feeling his arms getting tired, blisters rising on his palms, his breath coming in violent, quaking sobs, and still he sees their faces. 

Einar. Halvard. Torben. And Sigurd. All of them bigger than him. All of them stronger than him. All of them with working legs. 

He’d been sitting by the river, in the quiet spot he liked to go to sometimes where the water was calm, sailing the little wooden boat that Floki had made for him, acting out stories from the sagas and trying not to think about his father. They’d found him there, pitting his little wooden ship against a kraken made out of leaves and sticks and river weeds. They’d asked what he thought he was doing, and he’d told them, and they’d laughed at him. Called him a child, a disgrace, a cripple. Said that it was his fault that Ragnar had left. That he should have been left for the wolves instead of living to shame his mother and father. Yanked his little ship out of his grasp and laughed at his pitiful attempts to take it back. It was four on one, but he’d still fought, and he’d still lost. They’d left him flat on his face in the mud, the names they'd called him stinging worse than any of the scrapes. Cripple. Useless. Boneless. 

“Don’t you think that battle is won Ivar?” 

Ivar drops his stick-sword in fright, and turns to see a woman standing behind him, a woman unlike any he’d ever seen. Her skin is dark, dark like the traders that come from far to the south, and her long curly hair is nearly black. She’s tall, probably taller than his mother, maybe even taller than his father, but her eyes are kind, without a hint of malice or disgust as she looks down at him, and her lips quirk up in a kind little smile. She’s wearing armor of white and gold covered by a dark blue cloak, and one of her hands idly rests on a wicked, ice blue sword that hangs from her belt. She’s earth and sky and sea and clouds and winter and summer made into one and for a moment Ivar just sits there, frozen. She’s the most magnificent thing he’s ever seen. 

“Who are you?” Ivar asks, voice full of wonder. “Are you a goddess?”

The woman smiles, warm and friendly. “Not quite, young Ivar. Not quite.”

A loud stomp comes from a stand of trees at the edge of the clearing, followed by a horse’s whinny. Ivar cranes his neck and can just make out the shape of a horse through the tree trunks, its amber colored body topped by enormous, feathered wings, and his round eyes get even bigger.

“You’re a _Valkyrie,_ ” he breathes out in astonishment. 

The woman’s grin widens and she nods.

“What are you doing _here_?” Ivar asks. 

The Valkyrie’s face softens, her eyes taking in his scraped-up face, the angry tracks his tears have left through the mud still smeared across his cheeks. 

“I’m here because of what happened to you.” 

Her declaration snaps Ivar out of his dream, and he before he knows it he’s telling her all about it, wanting to explain away the shameful marks on his skin. 

“My brother hit me. Him and some of his friends. They stole my ship.”

The Valkyrie nods, as though she is well aware of fickleness of brothers. 

“Did you hit them back?”

“I tried….I don’t….I don’t really know how.…” Ivar hangs his head. 

The Valkyrie nods again, not a trace of pity in her face as she looks at him. 

“Didn’t your friends help you?”

“I don’t have….It was….It was just me…They caught me alone.” 

“Ah…. I see.…so they came at you like cowards, instead of facing you in a fair fight. How many was it then? Three on one?”

“Four.”

_“Four?”_

The Valkyrie smiles a little at Ivar’s admission, looks again at the scrapes marring his face and hands, and gives him a little impressed nod. She kneels down next to him until her face is level with his and she can look him in the eye. 

“Then you must have fought quite well, Ivar son of Ragnar, to come away looking like that after facing _four_ opponents.”

There isn’t a trace of mockery or dishonesty in her eyes and Ivar feels himself blushing under her gaze. He looks down at his boots to hide his answering smile. 

“I still lost though…”

The Valkyrie shrugs. “It happens. And from the sound of it, your brother and his friends will try something like this again. You can always beat them next time.” 

Her comments re-kindle the blaze of Ivar’s earlier frustrations, and he throws his hands up in exasperation. 

_“But I still don’t know how!_ ” 

The Valkyrie seems taken aback by this. 

“No one has taught you? No one has begun teaching you?” Ivar shakes his head and the Valkyrie’s brow furrows. “How old _are_ you?”

“ _Seven and a half!_ Mother keeps promising that I’ll be a great warrior someday, like my father and her father, but every time I ask to go to the training yard with my brothers she won’t let me! She keeps saying I’ll get hurt!” 

The Valkyrie looks somewhat offended at the thought of a boy of Ivar’s age having not at least _begun_ his training towards becoming a warrior, and her eyes flick down to his useless lower half. 

“You mother is worried about your legs?” 

“Yes.” 

“And will not let anyone teach you how to fight?”

“No.” 

“Even though your brother and his friends keep ganging up on you?” 

Ivar scowls. “Mother doesn’t know it’s them. I told her I tried to climb a tree and fell the last time they got me.” 

The Valkyrie mulls this information over, taking in Ivar’s fierce gaze, the blisters he’s given himself after his fight with the tree, the specks of blood dotted around his face. 

“I’ll teach you to fight then.”

Ivar’s face lights up. 

“You’ll what?! You will?! _You promise?!_ ” The Valkyrie grins and nods and Ivar gives a shriek of delight that startles a pair of ravens from a nearby tall pine tree, and the Valkyrie laughs with him as he bounces up and down in delight on his seat. Ivar reaches out and takes her warm hands in his, ignoring the sting of his blisters and babbling questions as fast as he can. 

“What are we going to do first? When can we start? Can we start now? Am I going to get armor like yours? Can I see your sword? Where did you get it?” 

The Valkyrie laughs at his eagerness, detangles her hands from his grip, and shifts around to unsheathe her sword. Down on both knees, she solemnly holds it out, the barest of smiles on her face as presents it to him as though he is a powerful king. Ivar reverently takes it from her, and her gentle hands help support its weight under his little arms. Its the most marvelous sword he’s ever seen - the feel of its grip sends a strange tingling feeling up his arm, and he can clearly see himself reflected in its wide gleaming blade. 

_“Ivar!”_

The faint shout coming from behind him startles Ivar and the blade slips in his grip, lightly biting into his thumb. He nearly drops it as he sucks his bloodied finger into his mouth, but the Valkyrie deftly catches it, sheathing it in one smooth motion. She ruffles his hair at the apologetic, embarrassed look on his face. 

“It’s alright. Happens to me too sometimes. Just another battle scar.” 

_“Ivar!”_

The shout comes again, and the Valkyrie gets to her feet. 

“Probably best not to let your mother see us together, hmm? Can you meet me back here tomorrow at mid-day? We’ll start then.” 

Ivar nods and the Valkyrie and she turns to walk swiftly towards a thick stand of trees. 

“Wait!” Ivar desperately calls. “Promise you’ll come back tomorrow? You _promise_?!”

The Valkyrie puts a hand on her sword hilt, and salutes him with the other, a sign of respect from a warrior to a king. 

“I promise, Ivar son of Ragnar.” 

—————————————————————————————————————————————————

That night, after his mother is done scolding and fussing and tutting over him (this time he told her he lost his grip trying to scale a steep, rocky path), Ivar dreams of flying. He’s seated on the back of a horse made of sunlight and gold, its great feathered wings stretched out on either side of him, longer than the length of a ship, and Kattegat is below them. His legs don’t hurt in the dream, his back rests against familiar white and gold armor, and warm, dark hands hold him steady. He laughs and shrieks in delight as the horse dips and swoops and floats over the mountains and forests around his home, Ivar clinging tight to its mane as they rise higher and higher until Kattegat is just a tiny dot beneath them and he thinks he could reach out like Loki and pluck the stars from the sky. He wakes with the sound of the Valkyrie’s laughter still ringing in his ears and for a few precious hours he feels no pain. 

—————————————————————————————————————————————————

It takes longer than usual for Ivar to slip out from under his mother’s gaze, and by the time he makes it out to the clearing he’s nearly an hour late. The entire time as he crawled he was telling himself that he was being stupid, that it was just a silly dream he had, that she wasn’t real, that he was crawling all that way for nothing, until he dragged himself around the bend of the narrow path and saw her waiting for him, her amber-colored horse tied to a tree at the edge of the clearing. The Valkyrie smiled as he hauled himself up to her, waiting until he had taken up his usual perch on the granite boulder before handing him the stick-sword that he’d dropped yesterday and drawing her own. 

“Ready Ivar?” He eagerly nods, excited to _finally_ start making up for all the days he should’ve been training with his brothers, and the Valkyrie laughs at the look on his face. “All right then. Let’s get started.”

To his disappointment, they don’t actually do any fighting that day. He thought they would launch right in to battling each other like the heroes out of the sagas, but instead, the Valkyrie insists on spending _a whole hour_ drilling him on how to properly hold his stick-sword, showing him the correct way to place his fingers, how to hold his arm, how far he should bend his elbow, before beginning to show him even the simplest of strikes and blocks. He’s been doing the same overhand strike for what seems like _forever_ when finally Ivar has had enough. 

“This is stupid! When are we going to _fight?!”_ he shouts, throwing his stick-sword into the dirt. 

The Valkyrie cocks a dark eyebrow at his outburst, coming to stand before him with her sword unsheathed and pointed directly at him. 

“ _Never_ drop your sword in a battle, Ivar son of Ragnar,” she says in a calm, level voice. “All of the great warriors began right where you are right now, and the _only_ _reason_ they survived their first battle and lived long enough to become great is because they took the time to master these _stupid things_. These _stupid things_ will keep you alive, so if you really want to learn to fight, to be a great warrior like your father and grandfather, use that anger properly, pick up your sword, and show me the strike again.” 

She doesn’t yell, doesn’t threaten him - her eyes are still kind, and the choice is still his. He can go home, go back to his mother, and pretend like this never happened, or he can stay and become something more.

After a moment, Ivar stretches out, picks up his stick-sword, and repeats the strike. 

That night, Ivar goes to sleep with a new soreness in his arms and a smile on his lips and dreams of flying again.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————

Much to Ivar’s delight, the Valkyrie comes back every day and trains him far away from the prying eyes of Kattegat. Their work with the sword progresses, and soon she brings him a proper wooden sword to train with, weighted to build up the strength in his arms, as well as a small wooden shield to practice with. They soon move from Ivar swinging at nothing but air to carefully choreographed fights, her precise strike, followed by his fumbling block and then messy counter-swing, repeated over and over, and every day Ivar gets better at it. 

It isn’t long before they’re having real sparring sessions, albeit carefully and slowly, with Ivar perched on his boulder while the Valkyrie shouts lessons at him, things like “Keep your shield up Ivar!” and “Turn your hips when you hit! Yes! Like that!” She doesn’t go easy on him, easily dodging his blows and tapping him again and again with the flat of her sword, but neither does she let him give up, and every day he lasts longer and longer against her. 

One day the Valkyrie brings a small bow and arrows with her and teaches him how to shoot, patiently retrieving every arrow even when his shots go wide and disappear into the forest, and by the end of the day Ivar can reliably hit the great ash tree sitting on the other side of the clearing. He’s not anywhere close to the target she’s drawn on it in charcoal, but by the gods, he’s getting there. 

They practice grappling, and Ivar takes to this like a fish to water. “In any battle, you can always go for your opponent’s legs,” she tells him. “Get your opponent on he ground, and they’re as good as dead. And seeing as how you’re down there already, it’s a bit of an advantage.” She’d laughed when Ivar had lunged at her, and easily dodged the rock he’d thrown at her knee. 

A few weeks later, as autumn was turning towards winter and giving a new crispness to the air, Ivar had entered the clearing to find the Valkyrie waiting for him, holding something behind her back. 

“I have a surprise for you Ivar,” she says with a grin. “I thought we could try something new today.” 

“What is it?!” Ivar cries. “Show me, show me, _show meee!”_

The Valkyrie laughs and holds out a small hand axe, made of dark iron wrapped in supple leather. 

“For you,” she says. “An early gift for Yol, made especially for you by the smiths of Asgard.” Ivar’s eyes go wide as he slowly takes it from her.

“For me?” he asks in wonder, hardly daring to touch the little weapon. “Are you sure?”

The Valkyrie laughs at the look on his face. “Of course I’m sure. Unless you don’t want it?”

“No, I want it! I want it!” Ivar cries, clutching the gift tight to his chest. 

The Valkyrie laughs again, bright eyes dancing. “Good, because I thought we could start on the axe today. And it’s much too late for me to think of something else for us to do…” 

As the Valkyrie guides him through the beginning strikes and blocks, Ivar feels none of the earlier impatience that he had when beginning with the sword. The axe comes easy to him, it feels simple. As the afternoon drags on, the Valkyrie has him take a few throws with it at the ash tree they’d been using for archery practice, and to her astonishment he hits the target on the fifth try. 

When it’s time for him to go, Ivar carefully slides the axe into this belt against his back, where it won’t get dirty as he crawls his way home, and once he gets there he carefully sneaks back into the hall, to the room he shares with his brothers, and hides it underneath his bed. 

That night, for the first time, Ivar dreams of battle and glory, of sailing off to raid with his father and coming home richer than a king. 

—————————————————————————————————————————————————

The next day, once Aslaug is busy with the business of running Kattegat and Ubbe and Hvitserk have gone off somewhere together, Ivar goes back to their room to retrieve his new axe so he can leave for his training session with the Valkyrie. He crawls his way back down the corridor, shoves the door open, and freezes at what he sees. 

Sigurd is sitting on his bed, holding his new axe, and looks up at Ivar at the sound of the door opening. 

“Where did you get this?” his brother asks, a dangerous edge to his voice.

“Nowhere,” Ivar immediately lies, trying to fight of a rising sense of panic as he comes into the room. 

“Did you steal it?” 

“No, it’s mine.”

“Then where did you get it?” 

“It was a gift.”

“From who?” 

“A friend.”

Sigurd laughs. “You don’t _have_ any friends Boneless!”

“Give it back Sigurd!” Ivar says, reaching for it, but Sigurd just pushes him away and continues to laugh at him. 

“Who would give you anything?” Sigurd asks, pushing Ivar back down as he tries to rise. 

“Sigurd, give it back! It’s mine!” Ivar says, reaching for his axe again, but Sigurd just stands up, holding his gift out of his reach. 

“No!” Sigurd says. “I like it. It’s mine now.” 

Ivar feels his panic and rage cresting, but them he remembers the lesson that the Valkyrie taught him back on his very first day of training. _Use your anger properly._

Before he knows it, Ivar’s hand snakes out and snatches Sigurd’s ankle. He yanks backwards, Sigurd crashes to the floor, and in an instant Ivar is on top of him. The axe clatters away across the floorboards as they struggle with one another, but eventually Ivar is able to grab Sigurd by the neck of his tunic with one hand, and hit him across the face with the other. One, two, three, four, _five times_ Ivar hits him, ignoring the blooming pain in his knuckles and his brother’s pained shouts, then Ivar grabs him by the shoulders and slams his head back against the floor once for good measure. 

As Sigurd lies there, dazed and blinking stupidly up at the ceiling, one hand reaching up to touch the blood now trickling from his nose, Ivar grabs a fistful of his hair and yanks their faces together until his brother is looking him directly in the eye. 

“Don’t you _ever_ touch my things again! Do you understand?! _Do you understand?!”_ Ivar hisses.

Sigurd looks like he might argue, until Ivar raises a fist again. 

“Alright! _Alright!_ Fine! Take your stupid axe - I didn’t really want it anyway!” 

“Good,” Ivar growls. “And stop calling me Boneless!” 

He gives Sigurd one last hard punch in the gut to drive the message home before he retrieves his axe and crawls out of the room, the sound of his brother’s groaning rising up behind him.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————

He’s late to the clearing again, later than he’s ever been before. The scrapes and bruises on his knuckles forced him to crawl slower than usual, and when he finally makes it the Valkyrie is pacing in a worried line from his boulder, to the ash-tree target, and back again. 

“There you are!” she exclaims as soon as he makes it down the path. Her warm dark eyes take in the state of his knuckles as he crawls over and boosts himself up onto his usual boulder. “What happened?” she asks, but there’s a hint of a smile on her lips, like she knows the answer to her question, but still wants to hear him say it anyway. 

Ivar smiles back at her, reaching back to pull his axe out of his belt. 

“This time I won.”

 


End file.
